Surprise! Josh Hawley’s new bills aim to make life easier and cheaper for Americans. | Opinion
The MAGA restoration is at hand. Donald Trump is returning to the White House. Republicans everywhere are celebrating.
How is Sen. Josh Hawley — the fist-waving prophet of Trumpism — meeting the moment?
By becoming a consumer advocate, naturally.
Surprised? So am I. Hawley, the Missouri Republican, is best known for being a conservative culture warrior. Often it’s obnoxious and annoying.
Every once in a while, though, he goes to bat for the little people. It’s the best version of himself.
And it’s this version of Hawley that we’re getting a glimpse of this week.
That’s because the senator has made waves with a pair of new bills to make life a little easier and a little cheaper for American consumers.
He’s even working with Democrats to get the job done.
One bill, introduced Wednesday, would make it illegal for airlines to incentivize their employees to badger flyers — folks who have already bought and paid for their plane tickets — into paying added fees for baggage, seating and other services.
The bill came a few days after Hawley growled at executives in a committee hearing on the junk fees that airlines increasingly use to pad their bottom line.
“Airline companies treat their customers like cattle. It’s offensive,” he said in a statement.
Who would disagree?
Cracking down on drug costs
Also on Wednesday, Hawley teamed up with Sen. Elizabeth Warren — the Massachusetts progressive — to crack down on rising prescription drug costs.
The legislation would try to drive down prescription drug costs by making it illegal for big insurance companies to own both a pharmacy business and a pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM.
“The insurance companies are out of control,” Hawley wrote on social media. “Start putting patients first.”
PBMs are the middlemen of the drug business, negotiating with drugmakers and pharmacies to determine how much prescription drugs will cost. But the biggest PBMs are owned by companies — like CVS, Cigna and UnitedHealth — that also own sprawling pharmacy businesses.
Critics say that’s a conflict of interest that drives up costs and leads to higher health insurance premiums. The Hawley-Warren bill would attack the problem head-on by forcing health conglomerates to sell off their pharmacies.
Those big companies “need to be broken up,” Hawley said this week.
Wall Street is taking Hawley’s words seriously: Health company stocks dropped 5% after the bill became public. Maybe change — good change — is coming.
When he’s good, he’s good but …
These efforts could make a positive difference in the lives of Hawley’s Missouri constituents. It’s just not the kind of right-wing red meat stuff that typically earns the senator regular guest appearances on Fox News.
(Sure enough, Hawley was on Laura Ingraham’s Fox show this week singing the praises of Kash Patel, Trump’s embarrassingly underqualified nominee to lead the FBI. Oh well.)
But when he’s good, he’s good. The best work that Hawley has done for his constituents in recent years has been his passionate advocacy for St. Louis residents exposed to World War II-era nuclear waste. If Hawley hadn’t pressed the cause, who would have?
So give credit where credit’s due.
The problem? Hawley doesn’t always deserve credit. For example: He’s spent the last few years promoting himself as something unusual for a Republican: a friend to labor unions.
This week, though, Hawley joined his fellow GOP senators and voted to reject Lauren McFerran’s nomination to the National Labor Relations Board. Her confirmation would have given the board a pro-union majority for the first two years of Donald Trump’s next term.
Now the opportunity is gone.
Republicans like “Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance who posture as pro-labor? This demonstrates that they’re full of crap,” The New Republic’s Timothy Noah grumbled on social media. “Like every other R they tow the Chamber of Commerce line.”
Who can disagree?
It was almost a really good week for Josh Hawley. It could have been better.